Posted
by
samzenpuson Wednesday August 13, 2014 @07:06PM
from the take-this-job-and-launch-it dept.

An anonymous reader writes The entire South Korean space program has been forced to shut down after its only astronaut resigned for personal reasons. Yi So-yeon, 36, became the first Korean in space in 2008 after the engineer was chosen by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) to lead the country's $25m space project. Her resignation begs questions of KARI regarding whether she was the right person to lead the program and whether the huge cost of sending her into space was a waste of taxpayer's money.

It's not evolution it's erosion, we are losing the original meaning and gaining nothing.

New words with new nuances, and reusing old worlds with new nuances happens all the time too. English is richer by far than it was 2 centuries ago. We may have gained nothing on this particular transaction, but we're far and away net positive.

colloquialism
klkwlz()m/
noun
plural noun: colloquialisms
a word or phrase that is not formal or literary and is used in ordinary or familiar conversation.
"the colloquialisms of the streets"
the use of colloquialisms.
"speech allows for colloquialism and slang"

Being against this particular transaction is not the same as being against the evolution of language. As far as I can tell, the new meaning of the phrase "begs the question" is the same as "raises the question," except with the additional nuance that the speaker/writer wants to sound like a person who is well read enough to have encountered the phrase in its original usage but, in fact, is not and has not. Being against that does not make one a grammar nazi or language Luddite.

If you actually begged a question in the way its defined and you pointed it out chances are a very small subset of the population will now actually have a clue what you're talking about. Like it or not the common use of "begs the question" has changed and fighting it makes you look like a pedant.

I find it hard to get worked up about this stuff when there are people out their who say things like "I could care less", when they mean they don't care at all.

See what I did they're?

How are we supposed to fix the more complicated phrases of English when we're losing touch of even the most basic grammar. You know it's bad when Weird Al has written a song about it. [youtube.com]

People have debated whether language knowledge should be considered descriptive or prescriptive for centuries. I doubt you two chuckleheads are going to resolve this debate today. Nor do I think Slashdot is the ideal place to resolve this issue. But that's me.

The important part is that both views are offered publicly so that a neutral 3rd party can make up their mind. Kind of like ensuring that people don't spend every waking moment tuned into just Fox News for their view of the world.

"Begging the question" was never a very good choice of terminology -- a half-baked translation from the Latin petitio principii. You might as well use the Latin because you have to know what the term means to have an chance of decoding its meaning; the words give no clue. "Asking ill-founded questions" or "asking premature questions" would have been better.

"Begging the question" has *always* misled most readers and hearers, and we're better off with the new meaning, which *everybody* understands (although many dislike).

I really don't think people think "Oh man, how do I appear smarter here, yes, yes, I will use BEGS the question, only the intellectual elite use this phrase, and I shall be one of them!!"

I think the phrase just makes no sense, I still can't understand how I'm actually supposed to use it. If I just looked at the words in the phrase, I would read it as something begging for a question, raising the need to ask a question. I didn't even know that phrase is somehow related to academia in anyway.

Dost thou propose that thine language shall never evolve and change in any manner unless it be so approveth by thee and thine ilk of the Nazis of Grammar? Shall thine language become static and fixed as the firmament and the heavens? Or hath the pinnacle of grammarian excellence been such obtained as to negate further change, owing to it's divine revelation and celestial perfection?

Would such change undo the works that man has wrought under heaven? Would thine countenance still continue as blessed and calm as days of yore? I beseech you, good sir, to ponder the myriad ways in which ones speech no longer resembles that of our forefathers, even as thou pines for a return to the olden ways.

Methinks thine bloomers may have come become ill adjusted leading to your distemper. I prithee, settle thine dyspeptic mood and swallow your bile, lest ye strain thyself. These ill spirits do not become you, and place much strain upon your liver.

I do believe the gentleman doth protest too much over matters of trifling importance.

If you have ever said "let me google that", then you too are guilty of this. If you have ever used any expression which is newer than the dark ages, you're certainly guilty of this.

Language evolves, and the fact that a second entire expression which sounds similar to the first is not the fault of the expression or the people who use it.

Yes, there is the logical fallacy of "begging the question". But there is also the more modern "begs the question" implying "that causes us to ask this", and it has been in use for decades.

Whether the grammar nazis among us accept or not is a different issue.

At best English is a bastardization of a several languages, thrown together with a hodge podge of rules which require you to know which language gave us the word and why, and it is entirely possible to construct phrases which sound similar but which convey an entirely different meaning.

It's not evolution it's erosion, we are losing the original meaning and gaining nothing.

We still have the original meaning, but it is has pretty much been limited to college logic classes for most of the last century. Giving pedants and excuse to bitch on the internet has probably boosted the original meanings usage an order of magnitude. If anything, the new meaning has probably saved the old meaning from obscurity and erosion.

While I have made this same argument here on Slashdot numerous times - particularly when, a few years ago, people took umbrage because "hacker" was supplanting "cracker" - in this case you'd first need some supporting evidence that the phrase "begs the question" is actually changing meaning in popular speech.

As far as I can tell, that is not the case - the submitter simply misused the phrase.

The only inevitability is that the term "begs the question" is now and will remain ambiguous.

The point of language is to communicate, and ambiguity is typically noise in the channel. I will leave deliberately injecting ambiguity into communication to the diplomats and artists—I don't refer to the fallacy using the poorly chosen original term anymore, especially when plainer terms communicate the concept more clearly and efficiently.

The only inevitability is that the term "begs the question" is now and will remain ambiguous.

Everything is ambiguous if you're ignorant. Why does that matter? Should I stop using words with more than three syllables just because someone might misunderstand them?

The phrase "begs the question" is never ambiguous to an educated individual who actually looks at the context in which it's employed. It's only ambiguous to those who either don't understand it's original meaning, or don't bother paying attention to the discussion.

The phrase should be abandoned, IMO. Use "raises the question" for the one, and "assumes the conclusion" for the other

That's the conclusion I drew a few years ago. For years I had been correcting the modern usage of the phrase, but then one day I got irked at the ambiguity and decided to read about it. Finding out that "beg the question" was a mistranslation of the petitio principii term changed my outlook. I mean, not to mention that the modern usage is syntactically and semantically valid English. The campaign to preserve a mistranslated term in favor of valid, intuitive English seemed untenable to me.

Know what else is a cliche? People whining about the relative meaning of a phrase which originated in the 16th century (and was apparently a bad translation from Latin), and a more modern phrase which uses some of the same words.

Unless you are specifically in a context where you're doing formal logic or debating, the former is rarely used. And, if you're in that context, everybody knows the difference between those two things. If you're not, people probably mean the more modern version of it.

If you seek credibility when you write, as you might when you argue for a position, it's better to write in the manner of an educated adult. Much of what's admirable in humanity comes from our willingness to fight when it's likely that we'll lose.

"Beg the question" is a commonly misused phrase that you probably confused with the uncommonly used phrase "begs questions".

You are apparently objecting to something that did not even exist except in your own mind.

I suppose if I were not a native English speaker, I could not have a conversation with you because you would be constantly correcting me on idioms I supposedly misused, only to find I simply mistranslated something that you otherwise, if not for your thickheadedness, would have understood just fin

How do we tag misuses of the expression "begging the question" in the article summary? I tagged this story as "notbeggingthequestion," but if there's another tag out there people are using, I'd like to be aware of it.

To beg the question is to assume a particular answer in the reasoning used to arrive at that answer.

It perhaps raises the question if she was the right person to lead the program...But it might beg the question that the huge cost of sending her into space was a waste of taxpayer's money (assuming that was the goal of spending the money)...

so what? I mean, if the program consisted of anything else than just begging a ride for one person to ISS from Russia/USA/EU then the leader calling it quits would have not had any affect at all.

but if the program consisted just of training her and her using 25 million dollars for a ticket to the ISS then sure, if she calls it quits then the program is at end - and she already went to the ISS so the program was a smashing success.

doing a rocket of their own would need a fair bit more of cash and an actual s

They want a space programme because Japan and China have them, and particularly because they want to be seen as equal to the Japanese in technology. Brands like Samsung and LG are still seen as cheaper or slightly lower quality than Panasonic, Sharp, Hitachi and the like. Korean cars like Hyundai and Kia are seen as cheaper versions of Toyota and Honda models. South Korea wants to shake this image off, and sees having a space programme as a way to do it.

The old slashdot post about Ko San was correct at the time - Ko San was chosen over Yi So-Yeon to be the first South Korean astronaut and was still going at the time the first article on slashdot was posted. However, Ko San was accused of violating their security protocols and revealing secret information twice while training at the cosmonaut training center. This caused him to lose his spot on the Soyuz and Yi So-Yeon went up instead. Ko San left the astronaut program years ago, leaving Yi So-Yeon as the sole remaining trained astronaut.Ko San Bio [wikipedia.org], he is an interesting dude.

If the whole project was dependant on the body they send in to space then they had bigger problems and they didn't have a space program at all. What they had was a person they put on a russian space ship and then FTA stuck in front of people to say what it was like.

If that is the case and the program was a program of 1 person then why would she have stayed? No development, nothing interesting, no reason to be there.

Lots of nations tried different ways of getting into space. Some like the UK and Australia did deals with the USA.
East Germany looked to the Soviet Union.
Long term the only way for a nation to get into space is to do do India did. Fully understand every aspect of the basic science and have your own hardware and software production, then move onto the next easy stage of space technology.
Other space nations will give you a free ride for the press or sell you tech but will not give away their own hard work.

The space program evolved from the Cold War, partly as a way to show that your nation has the technology to launch "a payload" into orbit and "land" it anywhere in the world you care to, without involving mushroom clouds in the demonstration.

Building your own program, as India is, is for sure the only way to achieve that Cold War goal (especially if you also grow your own nukes). Rented space ships seem fine for science. For national pride? Probably varies by culture, but I'd think a good ad/propaganda a

Of the two Australian born persons who have been in space. One of them took American citizenship in order to join NASA's astronaut program, the other already was an American Naval Officer when he joined NASA.

The only British Citizen that has been to space went up with the Soviet space program.

To my knowledge, the NASA human spaceflight program was for Americans only since its inception.

Australia tried so hard with vast test area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] after WW2.
The UK spent big on US equipment ideas and space related tech for its own secure sat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] option.
Both nations show its kind of hard to get gifts or buy in. Your own staff and production lines have to be set up in sync with your nations own science pace.
India really shows the science advancement option, as it started at the same time, with less and years later shows what can do now as a n

With that being said, it's silly to rely on only one person for your ENTIRE SPACE PROGRAM. That's a lot of stress and, no matter how intelligent, one person cannot conceivably perform all the desired tasks/research/whatever else astronauts do.

The whole trip was a "matter of national pride " and little more than a PR stunt in response to China's space program. She spent 11 days on the ISS on what amounts to space tourism, the average stay for real astronauts is 2-7 months. After returning to earth her job has been little more than to be paraded around and to give speeches.

Thanks, I was wondering how their "space program" managed to get someone into space for the ridiculously low price of $25M. Makes sense now, a "tourist" seat on a Russian Soyuz to the IIS costs around $20M.

my wife's home country had air force with two airplanes (one MIG-21 fighter and one ground attack L-39 Albatross), one of which didn't work. Just checked and it's even funnier nowadays they both don't work! They had five copters too that worked but the civilian government took them over to fly VIPs around

That's because stating that person doesn't want kids is something that is still considered somewhat culturally taboo in the US. On a dating site where profiles are quickly browsed, it's just too risky of a box to check.

It's like a person stating that they're an atheist. It's just safer to state something vague.

A $25 Million program depends on a single person not getting in an accident, not having physical (36 is not so young in that aspect) or psycological problems, or (in this case) not getting pregnant and keeping prepared and waiting for a decade between the spaceflights. And then the question is if this person was the right person?

Having a big project depending on a single person is absolutely stupid.

To go against the wishes of your management in Korean culture is one tough thing to do. That lady has got (metaphorical) balls. More so than the large majority of the Koreans I've worked with (in Korea).

I've actually sat around and gotten drunk with a couple of astronauts, both of whom have spacewalked. Apparently you don't get vertigo looking down towards the earth, it's when you look into the void. (Note that the helmets are designed so that as long as you're looking ahead, it's not within your field of view.